June 27, 2016

Brexit: The First Major Casualty Of Digital Democracy

The following article originally appeared in The Huffington Post India on June 27, 2016. It was reproduced on the Brookings Instituion's Order for Chaos blog on June 29, 2016.

In the aftermath of the United Kingdom’s vote to leave
the European Union, we are left with more questions than answers. What kind of
relationship will the UK now forge with the EU, and how will that affect
economic relations and migration? Will Scotland and Northern Ireland opt to
leave? What is the future of British politics, given turbulence within both the
Conservative and Labour Parties? Will a successful Brexit set a precedent for
other EU members — perhaps even some eurozone members— to leave the union? What
are the long-term economic consequences of the resulting uncertainty? Will
Brexit even happen at all, given the absence of a clear post-referendum plan,
the apparent unwillingness of ‘Leave’ campaign leaders to invoke Article 50 of
the Lisbon Treaty, and the fact that the referendum was advisory and
non-binding? Answers to these questions will make themselves evident in the
coming weeks, months, and years.

But there’s a bigger question worth asking: What are the
implications of Brexit for democracy? Arguably, Brexit represents the first
major casualty of the ascent of digital democracy over representative
democracy. This claim deserves an explanation.

When historians look back at the world of the past 25
years, they will likely associate it not with terrorism or growing inequality
but with the twin phenomena of the “rise of the rest” (particularly China and
India) and of globalization. Globalization involves the easier, faster and
cheaper flow of goods, people, capital and information. One big enabler of
globalization is the internet, the global network of networks that allows
billions of people to cheaply and easily access enormous amounts of digital
information. The rise of service and high-technology industries, trade
liberalization, container shipping, and the development of financial markets
have also been important enablers, as is the increased ease and lower cost of
travel, particularly by air.

Many technology optimists have assumed that globalization
would lead to the democratization of information and decision-making, and also
greater cosmopolitanism. Citizens would be better informed, less likely to be
silenced, and able to communicate their views more effectively to their
leaders. They would also have greater empathy and understanding of other
peoples the more they lived next to them, visited their countries, read their
news, communicated, and did business with them. Or so the thinking went.

But there has been little to justify such panglossianism.
There is some evidence for a correlation between greater information, political
democratization and economic progress, in that all three have advanced
steadily, if at different paces, over the past two decades. But that correlation
is weak. Instead, digital democracy — the ability to receive information in
almost real time through mass media and to make one’s voice heard through
social media — has contributed to polarization, gridlock, dissatisfaction and
misinformation. This is as equally applicable to the countries in which modern
democracy took root — in the United States and Europe — as it is to India, the
biggest and most complex democracy in the developing world.

The ascent of digital democracy around the world has some
shared features. One characteristic is that access to greater information has,
rather counterintuitively, contributed to a “post-fact” information
environment. Nick Cohen — speaking of British pro-“Leave”
journalists-turned-politicians Boris Johnson and Michael Gove —called out their
use of bold claims, their contempt for practical questions, their sneering
disregard for expertise, and their transgressions of the bounds of political
spin. These tactics are not all that dissimilar to Donald Trump’s assertions
about Barack Obama’s birth certificate or immigration policies, or Subramanian
Swamy’s insinuations about the nationality of senior Indian policymakers.

But leaders only exploit the vulnerabilities of a post-fact
world. The conditions have been laid by the digital sphere. A recent example
springs to mind. There is a widespread belief on Indian social media that US
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is somehow anti-India, pro-Pakistan,
and/or anti-Modi. I am no supporter of Ms. Clinton, but as someone who worked
on foreign affairs in Washington and knows many of her advisors, I found these
claims baffling. In fact, Clinton’s political opponents (whether Barack Obama
in 2008 or Donald Trump in 2016) have accused her of being too close to India,
while Pakistanis often view her as critical of their country and Prime Minister
Modi appears to enjoy cordial relations with her. After some inquiries, and a
few tips, I managed to trace these sentiments to a single publication, a poorly
sourced and misleading column that gained widespread circulation upon its
release. The article’s contents were deemed sufficiently credible to have now
become instilled as absolute fact in the minds of many Indians active online.
In a digital democracy, a lie or (better yet) a half-lie if told enough times
becomes truth.

Another outcome of digital democracy may be a variation
of what the psychologist Barry Schwartz has called the paradox of choice. Quite
possibly, the greater abundance of political choice leads to less satisfaction,
and the result is citizens increasingly voicing their displeasure with their
available political and policy choices. The political platforms of mainstream
parties rarely adhere entirely to individual voters’ views. That may explain
why many voters are gravitating towards parties, factions or leaders who offer
the simplest messages, and project themselves as alternatives to the
mainstream.

A third result of digital democracy, and one that has
been better documented, is the political echo chamber. Social media, rather
than creating connections with people who possess differing views and
ideologies, tends to reinforce prejudices. As the psychologist Nicholas DiFonzo
has noted, “Americans across the political spectrum tend to trust the news
media (and ‘facts’ provided by the media) less than their own social group.”
This makes it easier for views and rumours to circulate and intensify within
like-minded groups. Similar digital gerrymandering was evident in the EU
Referendum in Britain and the polarization is palpable in the Indian online
political space.

Finally, instant information has increased the
theatricality of politics. With public statements and positions by governments,
political parties and individual leaders now broadcast to constituents in real
time, compromise, a necessary basis of good governance, has become more
difficult. When portrayed as a betrayal of core beliefs, compromise often
amounts to political suicide. Political grandstanding also contributes to
legislative gridlock, with elected representatives often resorting to walkouts,
sit-ins, or insults — all manufactured for maximum viral effect — instead of trying
to reach solutions behind closed doors. Even as ease of travel allows
legislators to spend more time in their constituencies, making them more
sensitized to their constituents’ concerns, less gets done at the national or
supranational level. It is a trend that, once again, applies equally to the
United States, Europe, and India.

The unintended consequences of digital democracy —
misinformation and discontent, polarization and gridlock — mean that the
boundary between politician and troll is blurring. The tone of democratic
politics increasingly reflects that of anonymous online discourse: nasty,
brutish, and short. And successful politicians are increasingly those who are
able to take advantage of the resulting sentiments. Exploiting divisions,
appealing to base instincts, making outlandish claims, resorting to falsehoods,
and pooh-poohing details and expertise. All that could just as easily describe
the playbooks of populists around the world, on the right and left: Marine Le
Pen, Frauke Petry, Donald Trump or Subramanian Swamy as much as Jeremy Corbyn,
Beppe Grillo, Bernie Sanders or Arvind Kejriwal.

In all these cases, populists are willing to cross the
lines that mainstream parties have flirted with, becoming forces that the
centre cannot hold. US Republicans fanned the anti-immigration sentiments that
first the Tea Party and then Trump are only taking to their natural
conclusions, just as mainstream Democrats’ economic protectionism has been seized
upon by Sanders. Cameron’s euroscepticism, explained away initially as
constructive criticism, spiralled out of control with Brexit, just as those who
pronounced the death of New Labour helped paved the way for Corbyn. Will the
same one day apply in India, to the economic populism of the Congress, of which
Kejriwal has become a new torchbearer, or to the chauvinism of the right, which
Swamy now threatens to run away with?

Brexit is not anti-globalization so much as a product of
globalization. It is also a product of democracy rather than an affront to it.
But it is a democracy of a different sort, one that many of its ideological
forebears anticipated. When James Madison warned of “the superior force of an
interested and overbearing majority,” or John Stuart Mill cautioned against “a
social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression,” or BR
Ambedkar argued (in a slightly different context) that “political tyranny is
nothing compared to social tyranny,” they could just as easily have been
speaking in 2016 as in 1787, 1859, or 1936. Democrats around the world may not
yet be married to the mob, but plenty have been betrothed.

None of this should be interpreted as some kind of
nostalgia for an older, simpler world. That world was not necessarily simpler,
but it was more violent and chaotic, prejudiced and unfair, and poor and
backward. It may be hard to discern amid the smoke and noise, but there are
some benefits to digital democracy. Information is no longer in the hands of
the few. It is easier than ever to bring injustices to light. And the same
process can throw up mainstream leaders from backgrounds that are far from
privileged, such as a Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, or Narendra Modi. Two of the
three, Obama and Modi, rose to power on the backs of unprecedented social media
movements.

But representative democracy as we have come to know it
is under threat, and Brexit represents the first major casualty. Rather than
fight the tide, a collective rethink is needed about how to make democracies
resilient and productive in the digital age. It won’t be easy.